Why was Erigga so Triggered by Saidaboj’s dating requirements?
I'm not one to disregard people’s accomplishments and status, regardless of my opinion about them, so when a couple of people pointed out that I had disrespected Erigga by describing him as a Twitter Influencer rather than a rapper, I felt the need to make amend.
However, it still puzzled me that I had never heard any of this man's music before. All the times he has appeared on the pages and blogs I follow, there has never been a mention of his music or any news related to his artistry. Instead, they were all reposts of his tweets about a trending gist or person.
Given my ignorance in regard to his person, I decided I wanted to know him for myself to get an idea of who he is through his music.
So, off I went to YouTube to listen to Erigga’s music, and now, that I have become acquainted with him, I can say I understand why he was so bothered with Saidaboj’s dating standards.
My journey with Erigga started with his very first album "The Erigma" (nice wordplay of Erigga and enigma).
From the first song "Story Story", I kind of understood why his music struggled to become mainstream even though it still managed to attract a cult of loyal fans. He was too street.
Erigga is a Warri guy and a Millennial; he is street, creative, talented, aware, and has a knack for wordplay.
Although, his genre of music is not one that I personally enjoy, I liked several tracks on the album.
The first thing that struck me about Erigga was the cleanness of his lyrics. It is normal for rappers to use a lot of profanity as it gives them more edge as well as conveys the roughness of life on the streets.
But while I listened to Erigga’s songs, I didn’t feel any sort of disgust when he sang about the woman in his life. Just a little disapproval.
And I thought it was sweet that out of eighteen songs, three were love songs.
In "No Go Away" he begs his girlfriend not to dump him after she found a pair of female underwear in his room. From the song, I could tell that, as a struggling young man, he wanted a woman that would love him, support him, and understand that his dream of becoming a rapper would result in challenges for them as a couple.
In "Alcohol", he hypes this woman’s willingness to perform unpaid labour for him, like cooking and washing his clothes, since his dream does not afford him the time to do them himself.
"Oshere" is the third romantic tune on this album and it is a declaration of love for his woman.
It’s evident that Erigga was in a relationship with someone that he loved deeply when he wrote this album. The way he spoke of her and related their experiences in his songs suggests that theirs wasn't a young love but rather one that had solidified itself over the course of years.
It is a beautiful album and his most personal one to date.
My next stop was his first attempt at breaking into the mainstream music scene: "A trip to the South".
The album contains fifteen songs, and by the second song, I had already understood that during the five years that had passed between Erigma and this album, Erigga has undergone a transformation.
First of all, the streetness in him had been diluted: he still rapped in pidgin English, but there had been a shift in his manner of expression and presentation.
In Erigma, I felt an Erigga that was hopeful, playful, and loving. In "A Trip Of The South", I felt mostly desperation and disillusion.
The love story that permeated his first album and softened his person seemed to have gone sour. In this album, Erigga was all about making money and that became the main theme of the entire album and of every other album he released subsequently. And that ultimately quest for riches changed and corrupted his view of love, women, and his relationship with them.
In "Delete" Erigga sang that "mula rules the world" and bragged about how he took home two girls from the club. One of the girls had chosen to leave with him instead of her boyfriend because he had the money.
Over all, the album was a wish after wish, prayer after prayer, and a plea to God to bless him with success, fame, and wealth.
I could have skipped all the songs on the album and just listened to just "Bless Me", and I would have absorbed all the sentiments and message contained in it.
When I started the next album, I was hopeful that Erigga had managed to establish himself as a mainstream artist and regained the pureness of his early days. I know he didn't, but sometimes, even when you already know the end of the story, you still nurture the hope that it would somehow end differently. Sadly that didn't happen.
The first thing I noticed was that his songs had become shorter. From four minutes and over to barely three minutes long. I also sensed that his previous album had given him some visibility and attention, but they had not translated to meaningful relationships within the music industry.
In "Area to the World" he spoke about fake friends and love in the music industry and in "Next Track" he reveals that it could be due to his personality: he is talkative and problematic.
However, it's the track "Two Criminals" that communicated his status within the industry and how further his view of women had transformed. The lyrics were vulgar, the tone was disrespectful, and the woman in the song was presented as an object that was used to spite another man. As though she wasn't a person making her own choices.
But nothing prepared me for "Cold Weather". How could he do such a horrible thing to Lisa Steinfeld's classic "Been around the world"? The latter is a beautiful love song about a woman who desperately wants to reunite with her lover whom she lost after they had a nasty fight. Erigga's song is pecksual, vulgar, and just plain nasty. He uses dirty street lingo to describe various pecksual acts in the song. I got the gist within a few seconds of listening and moved on the next one.
"Home Breaker" is another tune he centred around his relationship with a side chick. Long story short, he had an affair with this woman, she got pregnant, and his next move was to plan how to get rid of her.
"Hookups Only" was even more explicit. In the song, he glorified pecks work and patronising pecks workers. He knew the different durations, their prices, and where to get the best bargain.
Erigga, the street guy who was begging his girlfriend to bear with him, had morphed into the mid baller who paid women for pecks and didn’t care that the woman was in a relationship with another man. As a matter of fact, woe betide the man who sat back and watched as some other guy enjoyed his goods because the latter had more cash to spare.
"My Love Story" had given me the impression of being a love song, but when I listened to it, I released that it was the mediocre man’s idea of what wooing a woman entails.
"I will give you money if you shake it for me."
Absolute garbage.
I did a time skip and went to his 2022 album, "The Lost Boy". From the very first song "Inshallah", it was clear that Erigga was still a struggling artist.
I would like to note that between 2017 and 2022, Erigga had gotten into a relationship, had a daughter, got married to his girlfriend, and added a son to his family.
When artists transition from singlehood to married, it shows in their lyrics. And the transformation is even more noticeable when they have a child.
In Erigga's case he had a daughter before he dropped this album and, when you add his girlfriend's presence in his life, I think it helped him to redirect his view of love and infuse it with more romance. Not quite as 2012, but definitely better than 2017.
In "How many gyal", I could see a continuation of the 2012 Erigga who was still hustling in the streets with his understanding girlfriend. And now in 2022, even though, he had not succeeded in establishing himself like he would have wanted, he wanted to show her appreciation for standing by him through thick and thin.
However, my optimism was shattered by a line in "Vawulence".
"We go chop your girl and spit am like cheap chingum".
Misogyny is a form of bigotry, and, sadly, marriage and becoming a father to a baby girl don't do much to erase it from men. It just makes them aware of its existence. However, they still refuseto admit that they are part of the problem.
These men might go to any length to protect their daughters from other men while simultaneously objectifying, exploiting, and abusing other women, including their own girlfriends and wives.
P Diddy comes to mind.
Another thing that irked me about Erigga’s lyrics was how he constantly described coitus as an action that he did to women and used to damage them.
In "Cotton Candy", he rapped "If she let me stretch her walls" and, upon hearing that line, I was totally disgusted.
I find it interesting that Erigga was cleaner and more subtle in his lyrics when he was in the streets than after he left the streets.
It’s as though he had a taste of fame and money, and consequently, all the romantic bones and respect for women in his body completely disappeared.
In "A girl called Grace", he informed his girl - not girlfriend because Erigga did mainly hookups now - that she could cheat on him, as long as she COLLECTED MONEY.
Erigga was very OK with transactional pecks. In fact, even his situationship could engage in it.
Finally, I arrived at this last album "Family Time". It'd only been a year since "The Lost Boy", so I didn't expect him to have undergone a radical transformation as a person or artist.
And I was right.
Seven songs in and I finally arrived at "Good Girl nor dey pay" in which he essentially told a woman, "I don't care for your company, I only care for your body". Then he confessed that he had long lost hope in love due to the state of his environment and what he witnessed every day across various social media networks.
This was an interesting track because I got further evidence of the shift in his character.
The Erigga who sang "No go away" appreciated having an understanding girlfriend. Fastforward to ten years later, and he had become the kind of man who paid to sleep with women who were being understanding girlfriends to broke men.
Let’s give to him though. At least he is self-aware and knows that he has become one of the boys that "our mama warn us about".
The man has no love to offer and I guess his wife knows but doesn’t care.
Then finally, finally, I heard the reason for his hard-heartedness.
In the same song, he sang, "I have been hurt before. Don't wanna hurt no more".
Can men normalise processing their first heartbreak and getting over it, instead of dragging it along and using it as an excuse to bleed on every woman they meet after the one that broke their heart?
With that being said, I can now focus on 2024 Erigga in connection to the ongoing drama with Saidaboj.
You can read the full gist by scrolling down on my timeline to the post I wrote about Saidaboj on May 28.
Besides stating that she proritises money in her relationships, Saidaboj also mentioned that the higher the currency, the faster she is willing to drop her pants. For the record, she started her asking price at N20 million (twenty million naira). That statement enraged people so much that they massed reported her accounts and got her banned on Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
I know why Nigerian men were so upset about a woman's decision to set a price on her body.
1. They feel entitled a woman's body.
2. They don’t have money.
But what I didn't understand was why a seemingly well-to-do man like Erigga would be triggered too. But after listening to five of his albums, now I know why.
ERIGGA NOR BLOW.
Erigga started off in the streets. He had a tough life, did things he shouldn't have done, and perhaps even spent time in prison, then he managed to find an escape with music.
The curious thing about his metamorphosis is that he was a better person when he had nothing. His vision of the world, although tainted and corrupt, was still pure and likable.
If we take the saying "If you want to know how civilised and progressive a country is, look at the way she treats the women" and narrow it down to men, we could also say that a man’s pureness and kindness reflect in the way he treats women.
Not just the women in his life, but every woman.
2012 Erigga treated women way better than the 2017 Erigga and forward.
Yes, he still had the patriarchal expectations that men have of women, but at least, he valued the woman in his life and appreciated the efforts she made for him.
Fast forward to 2017, this man had joined the host of other men who commodify women, engage in transactional pecks, and treat women like disposable objects just because they have financial privilege.
I don’t feel bad that Erigga never reached the superstar status. On the contrary, I’m glad he will never be able to have access to women like Saidaboj.
Saida expects a man to spend N500K (fifty thousand naira) on her within a week of talking with her.
At his current level, Erigga is only willing to pay between N50K-N70K (fifty thousand naira and seventy thousand naira) for a night with a pecks worker, like he sang in "Hookups only".
He also implied it in the tweet he directed at Saida: "So I go carry 20m give a--wo because of t--o when everybody get access to?"
As if Erigga could afford to pay N20 million to anybody for anything. 🤣
The man’s anger is not that Saidaboj is promoting transactional pecks since he himself has openly glorified, promoted, and engaged in it since he started making money.
His grouse with her is that he cannot afford her.
Inaccessibility.
That’s what this whole drama is all about.
My advice to Erigga is to focus on making the kind of music that will make him mainstream, so that he too can have N20 million to spend on a woman.
He can start by taking the Olamide route: drop his streetness, dilute the part that he can’t drop, upgrade his wardrobe, and stop being a keyboard warrior.
Olamide was just as street as him, perhaps even more. His first releases were in Yoruba and they were tough and rough lyrics. Listen to "Voice of the streets" to get an idea of what I am talking about.
But today nobody talks about Olamide as a street guy anymore. Instead, he is a respected businessman and record label owner who will never be caught dragging a woman on social media because she stated her standards.
Erigga can't afford Saidaboj means he can't afford her.
Besides, the man is married with two kids. What is he still doing in the streets and openly tweeting about sleeping with women for a few thousand naira?
All of this man’s seven albums can be summarised as a collection of anthems for broke men.
Is he not tired of singing the same tune over and over again?
Saidaboj is not his problem.
His failure to become a mainstream artist and make money is.
He should focus on that and perhaps I and others will start hearing more about his music than we do about his unappealing opinions about parenting and women.
